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Sofia Feltzing

Sofia Feltzing

Professor of astronomy

Sofia Feltzing

The PLATO mission

Author

  • Heike Rauer
  • Leo Michel Dansac
  • Bertram Bitsch
  • Ross Church
  • Melvyn Davies
  • Sofia Feltzing
  • Dominic Ford
  • Konstantin Herbst
  • David Hobbs
  • Anders Johansen
  • Judith Korth
  • Michiel Lambrechts
  • Hans Guenter Ludwig
  • Paul McMillan
  • Alexander James Mustill
  • Antoine C. Petit
  • Gregor Traven
Show all

Summary, in English

PLATO (PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars) is ESA’s M3 mission designed to detect and characterise extrasolar planets and perform asteroseismic monitoring of a large number of stars. PLATO will detect small planets (down to <2REarth) around bright stars (<11 mag), including terrestrial planets in the habitable zone of solar-like stars. With the complement of radial velocity observations from the ground, planets will be characterised for their radius, mass, and age with high accuracy (5%, 10%, 10% for an Earth-Sun combination respectively). PLATO will provide us with a large-scale catalogue of well-characterised small planets up to intermediate orbital periods, relevant for a meaningful comparison to planet formation theories and to better understand planet evolution. It will make possible comparative exoplanetology to place our Solar System planets in a broader context. In parallel, PLATO will study (host) stars using asteroseismology, allowing us to determine the stellar properties with high accuracy, substantially enhancing our knowledge of stellar structure and evolution. The payload instrument consists of 26 cameras with 12cm aperture each. For at least four years, the mission will perform high-precision photometric measurements. Here we review the science objectives, present PLATO‘s target samples and fields, provide an overview of expected core science performance as well as a description of the instrument and the mission profile towards the end of the serial production of the flight cameras. PLATO is scheduled for a launch date end 2026. This overview therefore provides a summary of the mission to the community in preparation of the upcoming operational phases.

Department/s

  • Astrophysics
  • eSSENCE: The e-Science Collaboration
  • Mathematics (Faculty of Sciences)
  • LU Profile Area: Natural and Artificial Cognition
  • LUNARC, Centre for Scientific and Technical Computing at Lund University
  • Department of Geology

Publishing year

2025-06

Language

English

Publication/Series

Experimental Astronomy

Volume

59

Issue

3

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Springer

Topic

  • Astronomy, Astrophysics and Cosmology

Keywords

  • Asteroseismology
  • Exoplanets
  • PLATO mission

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0922-6435